Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and Thanksgiving means football, and football nowadays means an endless parade of advertisements for DraftKings, FanDuel, and other daily fantasy sports businesses. This post asks the obvious question: are these contests illegal gambling? What are daily fantasy sports? In case you haven’t seen the commercials, Wikipedia summarizes daily fantasy sports as follows: [P]layers compete against others by building a team of professional athletes from a particular league or competition, and earn points based on the actual statistical performance of the players in real-world competitions . . . over short-term periods, such as a week or single day . . . . [U]sers pay an entry fee in order to participate, and build a team of players in a certain sport while complying with a salary cap. Depending on their overall performance, players may win a share of a pre-determined pot. Entry fees help fund prizes, while a portion of the entry fee goes to the provider as rake-off revenue. Gambling is illegal. In North Carolina, G.S. 14-292 makes it a crime to bet on a “game of chance.” Other states have similar laws. The argument that daily fantasy sports are gambling. Although sports like football may be games of skill, courts view the activity of betting on them as being a game of chance rather than one of skill. State v. Brown, 221 N.C. 301 (1942) (holding that betting on horse racing is gambling). And if betting on sports is a game of chance, the argument goes, it [...]
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